Box of Treasures

Coast Modern

October 2012 •English

A core group of architects embraced the West Coast from Vancouver to LA with its particular geography and values and left behind a legacy of inspired dwellings. Today, architects celebrate the influence established by their predecessors.

Punk is not vraiment dead ?!

June 2023 •French

Gurdeep Singh Bains

June 1977 •English

Gurdeep is a thirteen-year-old Canadian Sikh whose family runs a dairy farm near Chilliwack, British Columbia. They have retained their language and religion. Attendance at the Sikh temple, playing soccer with his schoolmates, and working on the farm are all part of Gurdeep's well-integrated life, but sometimes he feels a little different from the other children because he wears a turban. This film is part of the Children of Canada series.

The Fallen Feather: Indian Industrial Residential Schools and Canadian Confederation

January 2007 •English

Between 1879 and 1986, upwards of 100,000 children in Canada were forcibly removed and placed into Indian Industrial Residential Schools. Their unique culture was stripped away to be replaced with a foreign European identity. Their family ties were cut, parents were forbidden to visit their children, and the children were prevented from returning home.

Katurãma: uma história de luta e resistência

January 2023 •Portuguese

The Little Church That Could

June 2022 •English

Amidst a mostly Catholic community, a small tiny Anglican church offers more to the community of Placentia than people may think, and holds many connections and history to the rest of the world.

Out of the Interior: Survival of the small-town cinema in British Columbia

Invalid date •English

The hard-working cinema owners and operators of the small towns found in BC's southern interior are doing more than showing movies and selling popcorn––they are bringing their communities together.

The Aryans

April 2014 •German

THE ARYANS is Mo Asumang's personal journey into the madness of racism during which she meets German neo-Nazis, the US leading racist, the notorious Tom Metzger and Ku Klux Klan members in the alarming twilight of the Midwest. In The ARYANS Mo questions the completely wrong interpretation of "Aryanism" - a phenomenon of the tall, blond and blue-eyed master race.

The Eyes of Children

December 1962 •English

Christmastime at the Roman Catholic-run Kamloops Indian Residential School in British Columbia.

Antonio y Piti

November 2019 •Portuguese

Thirty years ago, a rubber company enslaved a group of Asháninka people, manipulating them into tapping the trees in the lush borderland between Peru and Brazil. The company was expelled by a coalition of Indigenous and non-Indigenous people, led by one mixed race couple. Now the adult children of this marriage combat political corruption and ongoing environmental disaster.

Nos restaurants : Une grande histoire française

December 2023 •French

Shellmound

September 2004 •English

“Shellmound” is the story of how one location was transformed from a sacred center of pre-historic cultures to a commercial mecca for modern people. What began as a Native American burial ground three thousand years ago, was transformed first into an amusement park, and later an industrial age paint factory. Now, the tainted ancient soil sits beneath the glittering lights of Banana Republic, Victoria’s Secret, and the AMC movie theaters. “Shellmound” examines the decisions made during the recent toxic cleanup, excavation, and construction of the Bay Street mall through the eyes of the city of Emeryville, the developer, the archaeologists, and the native Californians who worked on the site.

Saints And Warriors

February 2025 •English

Throughout the course of the Haida basketball season, leaders of iconic rez ball team the Skidegate Saints compete for two titles - defending their All Native Basketball Championship, while also battling for title to their land and waters with the government that stole it from them with the Indian Act.

The Return

June 2021 •English

It’s spring in the Ecuadorian Amazon and the Uyantza festival is underway with the community celebrating all that the forest has to offer. Meanwhile, news is breaking around the world that a novel virus is spreading and a state of emergency is declared across the country. As people test positive for COVID-19 in the community, some families decide to leave and head deeper into the jungle. Disconnected from school, friends, the internet, and work, one family learns to reconnect with life in the forest. The children begin to unlearn the national curriculum, and instead are taught Indigenous knowledge that mainstream schools normally pass over. As COVID-19 wreaks havoc around the planet, the family reconnect to their ancestral ways, but as news arrives that Ecuador’s lockdown will end soon, will the family choose to return?

Our People Will Be Healed

September 2017 •English

Legendary documentary filmmaker Alanis Obomsawin provides a glimpse of what action-driven decolonization looks like in Norway House, one of Manitoba's largest First Nation communities.

Attiuk

July 1963 •French

The people of Unamenshipu (La Romaine), an Innu community in the Côte-Nord region of Quebec, are seen but not heard in this richly detailed documentary about the rituals surrounding an Innu caribou hunt. Released in 1960, it’s one of 13 titles in Au Pays de Neufve-France, a series of poetic documentary shorts about life along the St. Lawrence River. Off-camera narration, written by Pierre Perrault, frames the Innu participants through an ethnographic lens. Co-directed by René Bonnière and Perrault, a founding figure of Quebec’s direct cinema movement.

Thelma & Louise: Born to Live

April 2025 •French

The story was born from the pen of debutante Callie Khouri: Thelma, married to a macho man, and Louise, an independent waitress, go on a girls' getaway that turns into a runaway when the latter, during a stopover in a bar, shoots a man who was trying to rape her friend. But at the dawn of the 1990s, screens were dominated by testosterone-fueled opuses, and Hollywood studios were reluctant to entrust the steering wheel to a female duo. Seduced by the script, forwarded by his associate Mimi Polk, Ridley Scott agreed to produce the film and decided, against all odds, to direct it himself. Under the British director's watch, the two accidental outlaws, fabulously portrayed by Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis, flee across the vastness of the Far West on an emancipatory epic that sees them defy male oppression and reveal themselves to themselves.

Bontok, Rapeless

September 2014 •Tagalog

Two Filipina victims of sexual abuse search the truth behind the finding of a renowned anthropologist: that merely a few generations ago, the Bontok Igorot lived in what seems an unthinkable utopia—a rape-less society.

Those Who Come, Will Hear

June 2018 •Inuktitut

The documentary proposes a unique meeting with the speakers of several indigenous and inuit languages of Quebec – all threatened with extinction. The film starts with the discovery of these unsung tongues through listening to the daily life of those who still speak them today. Buttressed by an exploration and creation of archives, the film allows us to better understand the musicality of these languages and reveals the cultural and human importance of these venerable oral traditions by nourishing a collective reflection on the consequences of their disappearance.

This Was the Time

January 1970 •English

When Masset, a Haida village in Haida Gwaii (formerly known as the Queen Charlotte Islands), held a potlatch, it seemed as if the past grandeur of the people had returned. This is a colourful recreation of Indigenous life that faded more than two generations ago when the great totems were toppled by the missionaries and the costly potlatch was forbidden by law. The film shows how one village lived again the old glory, with singing, dancing, feasting, and the raising of a towering totem as a lasting reminder of what once was.